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Topic: Is Yoda a coward? (Read 8599 times)

I don't think Leia kept alot of different outfits on the Falcon. Chewie doesn't wear clothes. As for Han, I think alot of us look pretty much the same from day to day as far as what we wear.

Not sure about you, but I have more than one shirt and pair of pants, so I will likely look a little different from day to day. I can guarantee that if I was trapped on a ship for a month - a ship I used as my home, I would have a change of outfit and look different than I had a month prior. The fact that the characters all look pretty identical to when they were in the asteroid suggests that they weren't habbling along in space for quite that long.

I don't think Leia kept alot of different outfits on the Falcon. Chewie doesn't wear clothes. As for Han, I think alot of us look pretty much the same from day to day as far as what we wear.

Not sure about you, but I have more than one shirt and pair of pants, so I will likely look a little different from day to day. I can guarantee that if I was trapped on a ship for a month - a ship I used as my home, I would have a change of outfit and look different than I had a month prior. The fact that the characters all look pretty identical to when they were in the asteroid suggests that they weren't habbling along in space for quite that long.

I would assume that Leia didn't have a change of clothes at all - she wasn't planning on leaving Hoth on the Falcon. That was a last-minute change when she was unable to get to her transport.

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I don't think Leia kept alot of different outfits on the Falcon. Chewie doesn't wear clothes. As for Han, I think alot of us look pretty much the same from day to day as far as what we wear.

Not sure about you, but I have more than one shirt and pair of pants, so I will likely look a little different from day to day. I can guarantee that if I was trapped on a ship for a month - a ship I used as my home, I would have a change of outfit and look different than I had a month prior. The fact that the characters all look pretty identical to when they were in the asteroid suggests that they weren't habbling along in space for quite that long.

I would assume that Leia didn't have a change of clothes at all - she wasn't planning on leaving Hoth on the Falcon. That was a last-minute change when she was unable to get to her transport.

I'm totally in agreement on Leia's outfit, though I'd argue that month(s) of wearing the same thing would make her clothes look a little disheveled. Likewise I think her general appearance might look a little more haggard based on your arguement - she wouldn't have had time to grab a make-up kit or lipstick or hair products either, yet she looks about the same when they get to Bespin as when she left Hoth.

It was definitely more than just an overnight flight. Remember Han's comment about Bespin being pretty far, but we can make it? Also there is the issue of the Empire arriving before Han did, thereby leaving Lando no choice. I figure they had to fly a couple days, up to a week or two, just to get to Bespin (thereby giving Boba a chance to track them, then jump ahead of the Falcon, call in the Empire and lean on Lando. This would also give Luke a couple weeks on Dagobah for his training (probably the fastest novice to nearly knight in history....).

It was definitely more than just an overnight flight. Remember Han's comment about Bespin being pretty far, but we can make it? Also there is the issue of the Empire arriving before Han did, thereby leaving Lando no choice. I figure they had to fly a couple days, up to a week or two, just to get to Bespin (thereby giving Boba a chance to track them, then jump ahead of the Falcon, call in the Empire and lean on Lando. This would also give Luke a couple weeks on Dagobah for his training (probably the fastest novice to nearly knight in history....).

Agreed - I think a couple of weeks seems about right. Regarding Luke's training - keep in mind that he did have some training from Ben before and after his demise. I'd still agree that he had far less training than anyone else getting to JK, but he wasn't a total noob when he reached Yoda.

Which brings us back to the original topic. I initially thought Yoda was pretty cowardly to not do more after exiling himself. After mulling this over a bit though, I wonder if maybe he had visions of the future like many Jedi do and came to realize that his best option was to wait on Dagobah for Luke. I like the sound of that more than him just being defeated and guilt-ridden at the end of his life.

Me too. I would much rather think that Yoda had faith in the force. I always though of him as a wise old sage who was content to let the force lead him to whatever it held for him. Or led Luke to him as the case may be. I never thought of him as a failure or cowering in fear or self-pity.

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I took his line in ROTS about "going into exile" or whatever as his understanding that the course of action he'd been taking (direct confrontation of Palpatine) wasn't the direction the force was directing him to take, so he was taking that direction. Basically he'd come to realize that he couldn't match power for power and another approach was necessary.

Speaking of not packing a change of clothes; I bet Yoda was pretty ripe considering he didn't appear to bring a change of clothes with him either when he fled Kashyyyk and then Coruscant, then spent the next 20 years in a swamp....

I took his line in ROTS about "going into exile" or whatever as his understanding that the course of action he'd been taking (direct confrontation of Palpatine) wasn't the direction the force was directing him to take, so he was taking that direction. Basically he'd come to realize that he couldn't match power for power and another approach was necessary.

Maybe. This is just another case where Lucas should have added a line or two to provide more connection to the OT. It would have been easy enough for Yoda to just say something like, "Into exile to meditate on our next course of action I must go. Foresee I do, possibility of a new hope in the distant future."

I was surprised to see the title of this thread when I was viewing the main page of the boards so I had to take a look.

My thoughts on Yoda's exile when taking the Prequels into account is that the power of the dark side which had hid Palpatine's machinations from the Jedi for almost a generation and led to the Clone Wars and the Purge is what led Yoda to his self-imposed exile. He didn't have the power to defeat Palpatine on his own and knew he had to get away at the very least to save himself to help with the future - the training of Luke and Leia. Having felt the deaths of so many other Jedi, yet taking into account the dark influence over the Force at the time, Yoda may very well have believed he and Obi-Wan were the last of the Jedi and being incapable of defeating Palpatine (remember they think at this point Anakin is dead) figure the best course of action is to go into hiding and re-group when the twins are ready for their destiny.

Someone brought up why doesn't Yoda go searching for the survivors of the Purge as Vader was easily able to find them. Keep in mind Vader had the vast resources of a Galactic Empire to hunt down the Jedi. There were Imperial Forces - Stormtroopers, Dark Jedi, Inquisitors, Emperor's Hands, etc - all across the galaxy keeping an eye out for Jedi, this is something Yoda did not have available to him. Assuming he knew there were survivors he may have thought it best not to look for Jedi in the belief that it may help them survive longer. Palpatine and Vader essentially know Yoda survived the Senate Duel so they would be keeping an eye out for him and one would assume he's a big target in the Force (I know doesn't exactly explain why he wasn't found on Dagobah) so Yoda looking for Jedi might not have been the best idea at the time. There's also the technological impact, after hiding away on Dagobah for so long, it's possible that little Wookiee ship he was on would be incapable of flying him across the galaxy in search of Jedi, essentially leaving him stuck on Dagobah until someone (Luke, Leia, or Obi-Wan) came to him.

One of the problems with the Prequels is that it's warped the scope of the Original Trilogy. If you read any of the pre-production work for A New Hope and the other two movies you can tell Lucas initially had different ideas for the time between the Clone Wars and Luke's Jedi training than what the Prequels give us. In the early ideas for Star Wars, the Jedi were wiped out long ago and there had been no survivors for a lot longer than the handful of years we find it out to be thanks to the Prequels and EU. So Yoda being in hiding is much easier to explain since it can be assumed that there have been no Jedi for 40, 50, 100 years. But the events of the Prequels change that and thus we have to change our viewpoint on the actions of Yoda and Obi-Wan. I think we find that their actions are made out of a belief that they (and perhaps any Jedi survivors, whether or not they are known) are incapable of stopping Palpatine and as mentioned that only Luke and Leia can do it. But if they do anything before the twins are ready to take on their destiny they risk the chance of destroying their only hope - which would be why Obi-Wan doesn't attempt to train Luke - sidebar on that point when isolating ANH on it's own and from a storytelling pov, Luke can't be trained until a personal trauma (the death of his family) leads him down the path of abandoning his current way of life to follow his destiny.

Oh and as far as how long the events of ESB take, I always felt it was a couple of months. As mentioned, the Falcon did not have a fully functional hyperdrive after they escaped the Imperial fleet so on sub-light and assuming their current position was less than one light year from Bespin, this timeframe could be months. Also there's a lot of training for Luke to do, despite his affinity for the Force I highly doubt he could learn all he did in just a few days. From a storytelling pov that's not believable, which yes I know is saying a lot when you take into account some of Lucas' work in the Prequels. As for Han and Leia's clothing, my guess would be they shared some of Han's clothes on the Falcon (he should have some sort of laundry unit on the ship) and that when they got to Bespin any additional clothes they received were either gifts from Lando or bought with any money they had or perhaps earned (Han could have always won a few hands at Sabacc).

Ok so that was a lot, you can see I think an awful lot on this kind of stuff - 30+ years of viewing the movies and reading the EU gives the opportunity to expand what we think and know from Star Wars to fit it into our own liking. This is how I personally can fit much of the EU into the Saga and resolve conflicts like the various timelines created by the comics between ANH and ESB (Marvel, Sunday Comics, Dark Horse) and that's what is best about Star Wars. Regardless of what Lucas has written, especially with the Prequels in contradiction to the Original Trilogy, we as the audience can decide what has truly happened at least for us individually.